Lake Tahoe 2015/16 - Year of Godzilla Baby Jesus

**TahoeJ** · 12-28-2015, 05:27 PM

Silverado pops on Wednesday. The thing hasn't spun in three years... I imagine they had to work out some kinks and do some maintenance but that's pure speculation.

**powdork** · 12-28-2015, 05:32 PM

Originally Posted by SchralphMacchio

Interesting ... I wonder if it was a cornice collapse trigger. It would be cool to tiptoe into the area to see if a slide happened, how deep of a crown etc, assuming no other creepy cornices hanging over that zone.

Definitely not. Winds were blowing the opposite way and there's tons of small trees above. there is a path above and I'll put it up tonight when I get back from work. it is a sledhead zone though.

**Deep Days** · 12-28-2015, 07:07 PM

Looks like the woman and I will be able to make it work for a hat trick this weekend. Squaw Friday, squaw/Alpine Saturday, and Kirkwood on the way back to San Diego Sunday.

Haven't been to Kirkwood in almost 10 years, so a little help getting around the mountain might be sweet. Seems like wall and chair six or the obvious choices, and I remember hiking off chair four actually was pretty fun (but then again I was quite the Gaper back then). Don't know much beyond that!

Many beers to anyone who might be willing to show a san dieageaoean around. Little bit of a timeline (pretty far drive back Sunday night and have work on Monday), so probably would need to be lunch beers, but beers nonetheless! A little hungry for for some small to medium stuff to jump off of especially if good coverage and not flat landings, but fast turns on good snow will certainly do!

Paging 666 crew?? Dunno if I qualify as worthy, or if you are all equal opportunity shredders.

Shoot me a PM if interested. Pretty psyched to be getting back to Tahoe again!

Many thanks!

**Dshack89** · 12-28-2015, 07:30 PM

Wasn't expecting much today at Heavenly, turned out I was wrong:

**ScrewYou** · 12-28-2015, 07:34 PM

Damn blackout days

**sierraskier** · 12-28-2015, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by youknowwhatitis

Does anyone know why Silverado hasn't opened at Squaw yet?

From the new "Operations Blog" at Squaw Valley USA. Good effort for them to share more info/background, we'll see if it's just a New Years week thing or actually a useful ongoing source of info.

http://squawalpine.com/explore/blog/...pens-wednesday

**Deebased** · 12-28-2015, 09:55 PM

Originally Posted by Dshack89

Wasn't expecting much today at Heavenly, turned out I was wrong:

Wow very nice. Anything left over making it worth the trip for tomorrow?

**Dshack89** · 12-28-2015, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by Deebased

Wow very nice. Anything left over making it worth the trip for tomorrow?

There are definitely plenty of powder pockets left. I'm a newbie to Heavenly but it seems like nobody had any creativity to find the fresh

**buildakicker** · 12-28-2015, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by SchralphMacchio

For anyone silly enough to look at alpine objectives right now ... the sun and wind have conspired against you so choose terrain wisely. It's now ski crampons and self-arrest tool conditions until the next storm comes in.

Ottime and I went for a walk at CPSSR on Sunday 12/27 ... we found edgeable windboard and smooth windbuff on a west facing aspect at CP yesterday, but all other aspects above treeline are totally fucked by wind and sun. The S wind for Sunday came in harder than forecasted, blowing a very consistent 30-50 throughout the day at ridgelines, with sustained 50 MPH in the afternoon that created wraparound winds on other aspects that really dove up and downslope above treeline, not just at ridgeline elevations. As the wind rotated from W during the 12/24 storm to N Xmas night to E on Saturday and then back to S on Sunday it basically jacked up every aspect that was not due west, even deep rock-protected coolies. The sun created a 1/2" crust on south faces at upper elevations that got glazed over and frozen solid by winds - boot penetrable but not ski penetrable (e.g., use ski crampons). South faces at ridgelines were completly stripped but really fat about 100' below. North and east faces were bulletproof windboard top to bottom, in some cases edgeable and in other cases not (we both had had some exciting lost-edge slides on non-edgeable N-facing apron yesterday). Lots of firm bigass sastrugi out there and some of the windboard and suncrusts may be now deceptively hidden by the 1-2" of new snow from last night. Some big cornices now exist on north, east, and west facing ridges and local terrain features (e.g., boulders and downed trees).

My advice, stay well below ridgelines or in the trees until next storm

~~~~

Regarding stability and fear mongering from last week ... well I was personally optimistic over the previous weekend that the 6" of SWE forecasted to hit in a big bang would crush and/or rip and reset existing weak layers before locking up the snowpack, which basically did happen. But you don't always get that benefit that will happen and need to temper optimism with caution; wait for or go out and get good data after the loading event to develop confidence that deeper slides won't happen before committing to terrain choices where the problem could exist. This is exactly why Deep Slab showed up on the problem list last week until we had more observations came in.

We should be afraid of slides that can rip 3 to 8' deep, it's called considering consequences of a path going vs. certainty of stability. We should be afraid, and we should have that discussion with our partners regarding the depth and location of the current avalanche problems, even at Jakes and Powderhouse to avoid those rocky chutes & terrain traps where thinner depth and buried terrain features could more easily allow a trigger and create that "surprise" that I was referring to in my previous post. That's the point I didn't get across very well in my earlier post.

I admit, I was being pretty emotional about it when I posted last week, afraid of people getting after it without having that discussion first, but your perspective changes when you watch your friend die in a step-down to a 4' persistent slab because you didn't have that discussion (and it was two years ago basically to the date so I had a lot on my mind). It happens in Tahoe too, and it happens especially when conditions are unusual with buried crust-facet sandwiches or SH layers, even in "micro" terrain below treeline. I referred to Ward Canyon 3/1/2012 in my previous post because it was a similar problem setup to what we had going into last week. Read this if you don't think step-downs are aren't something to be afraid of in California (based on Rockwood's firsthand account at CAW2015, some of the minor details in this report aren't accurate but the big points are all there). I will add that there was a good delay, it sounded like around 10-20 seconds, between when the initial windslab went and when the deeper persistent slab ripped out - this wasn't reported in the incident report but Rockwood mentioned it during his talk.
http://www.sierraavalanchecenter.org...stanford-rocks

I guess in summary, choose whatever terrain you want, but at least have that discussion about problem consequences vs. certainty before you do. Fair enough?

Anyways, happy turns going into the New Year everyone ... enjoy the start to the season and have some good Type 1 and 2 fun out there.

I remember that Stanford rock post... Thanks for this writeup.

**Ottime** · 12-28-2015, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by Dshack89

There are definitely plenty of powder pockets left. I'm a newbie to Heavenly but it seems like nobody had any creativity to find the fresh

Holiday week. Lots of folks who vacation at Heavenly want to stay on clearly marked and groomed trails.

Dead at KW today. Skied quite nicely and I was finding plenty of knee deep snow at the boundaries and further out in TS and Vista. Vista was basically untracked at noon when I hit it. Kind of hoping that Tbar never spins.

DeepDays, I don't think I'll be up next weekend, but if I am, I'd happily show you around. Plenty of good hits out there right now, but the low tide ones are quickly getting buried.

Had a good time poking around with Schralph and Jetlag yesterday. Jetlag was smart to ditch us and head back to the car mid day. The fun went from type I to type II rather quickly. West face was fun. The skin back up over the Sisters was approaching type II fun. Fiddling with the dynafiddle mid chute only to have the ski release on my next turn as the snow transitioned to ice was approaching type III. Had a pretty good fall, but was pleased with my ability to go from superman pose to on my back and arresting with boot before becoming one with the rock below. It turns out you accelerate pretty quickly on steep ice.

It was dumping at KW when I left at 1:30 today.

**TurxSki** · 12-29-2015, 03:00 AM

Originally Posted by Ottime

...only to have the ski release on my next turn as the snow transitioned to ice, was approaching type III...

"Laugh? I nearly died..."
??
It was pretty weird "mysterious" snow inbound KW on Sun.
"Dry" cream cheese, rain-ice, tall wind-pack blocks...
Mind you the drop in under 10 was the nicest I can remember.

**lepistoir** · 12-29-2015, 09:15 AM

Wirth a read (and remembering next time a resort expansion is considered). Concise piece on water and energy use of snowmaking for skiing. "like burning about a thousand pounds of coal an hour" to make one acre-foot of snow.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/201.../snow-monsters